So, feel free to rummage through and see what you think - or send me a note to ask me questions, or challenge my opinions! As I mentioned on my Current Reading page, I've been amazed by the number of people who have written to me from out of the blue since I've had this page up, saying they'd done a web search for some author & stumbled across this site. So if you're one of these folks, or anyone else, & you have any comments or recommendations you'd like to share, PLEASE write to me! I'd love to hear from you.
-- laura
Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses -- this voluptuous book I've been reading in little bites, as it's much too rich to read all in one sitting. Allende explores the age-old connections between food and sensuality, including many recipes (I haven't tried any yet, but will if a good opportunity arises!). The best part of this volume is the illustrations, especially the numerous paintings by Martin Maddox and George Tooker, which add a kind of glow to the delicious pages. (1/00)
House of the Spirits --
Paula -- an incredibly rich autobiography of sorts, written for her dying daughter -- also very sad, but well worth it. If you've read any of Allende's other books, particularly House of the Spirits, you'll recognize where she got a lot of her material! What an amazing life. (7/97)
Mr. Vertigo -- given the similarity of names, it makes sense that Paul Austin would have recommended this one -- that makes three books in as many weeks & all very, very good. This one is the at-once delightful and sobering tale of Walt the Wonder Boy, aka Mr. Vertigo, who learns to fly. Auster's writing style is both crass and surprisingly tender, and Walt's life takes such wild turns and extreme highs and lows I nearly feel dizzy now that I've finished it. I think there's a lesson somewhere in here about perseverance & acceptance of fortunes both bad and good, but mostly it's just a great, wild, hair-raising yarn. Highly recommended. (6/00)
The New York Trilogy -- book group selection for December 2000, an intricate threesome. Greatly enjoyed all three, although they also left me feeling lonesome and a bit sad. Ostensibly detective/mystery stories, but for me they seemed to be much more about the process of writing, the sort of cabin-fever-craziness of it, the ways in which it can get hard to tell where you end and the writing begins -- a fear that the writing will eventually replace you, perhaps? All three of these stories are shot through with disappearances, men losing track of their own selves, or giving into to the often-random turns of fate and chance and no longer actively directing their lives, even if they don't particularly like the way things are going. Fascinating the way Auster weaves himself into the tale, turning the old half-of-fiction-is-autobiography idea on its head. Lots to think about. (1/01)
Timbuktu -- perhaps an appropriate book to read immediately after Sarton's The Fur Person, as this one is also told from the perspective of a stray pet; this time it is the tale of Mr. Bones, a dog living with a homeless man, Willy. G. Christmas, who is on his last legs. This story has more of a melancholy tone, but is still very lively and funny, and muses on the magnitude of loyalty as Mr. Bones makes his way through the often-frightening world without Willy. Very sweet, without becoming saccharine. (8/00)
A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You (short stories) -- these stories are beautiful. None of them are about conventional love in any sense of that term, and thus they are even more powerful -- the odd places in which people find love, and the unexpected strength of those connections. The opening story watches a woman at a hospital, while looking after her beloved daughter who's about to have a sex change opertation to finally become the man she's always felt she really is, unexpectedly fall in love with an endocrinologist who works in the same medical center. The next, my favorite ("Rowing to Eden"), makes an intricate triangle of a woman struggling with breast cancer, her best friend who's already been through a similar fight, and her frightened-yet-determined husband -- the love they each have for her, her own desire to be left alone with her illness, and the ways in which the husband and friend find comfort in each other, grappling with their mutual fears of loss and grief. All of the loves in this book are so fierce, so absolute, they make me jealous in a way -- but it's also a treat to be let into their worlds. (7/01)
Come To Me (short stories) -- her stories all overlap -- first a story from the point of view of a man, then the next from the point of view of his wife, but moving on in time & not telling the same story at all. I understand that Ms. Bloom is a psychoanalyst, but after years of doing just that, these characters started coming to her, in her head, not based on any of her patients, and she felt compelled to write their stories down. Beautiful stuff -- I highly recommend it. (10/97)
Love Invents Us -- reading this was a lesson in patience for me (something I always need more help with!) I was not enjoying it at first -- it seemed like the central character was being drawn as dismally as possible, making the book an excursion through the worst possible aspects of being a geeky, troubled teen. However, I'd LOVED Bloom's previous book of short stories, so I stuck with this one, and lo and behold, it gradually evolved, just as people do, and became a complex, fascinating, echoing love story. Reminded me that, even if I'm feeling frustrated with something I don't understand, if I can give it some time and space, it might develop into something beautiful. (8/98)
The Baron in the Trees -- In a moment of anger (not wanting to eat the lunch his sister has prepared), young Cosimo climbs into a tree and refuses to come down -- and when his family doubts his ability to last up there for long, he ends up spending the rest of his life in the branches. This lovely book follows his entire life, through friendships, battles, forest fires, love, and philosophizing. A great book of determination and a willingness to consider alternate paths. (5/99)
The Castle of Crossed Destinies -- a number of travelers come to stay in a castle overnight, but the enchanted forest they have passed through has rendered them all mute -- yet they feel compelled to tell the stories of their adventures through a game of tarot, interpreting the meaning of the cards that turn as the narrative of their tales. The cards themselves are printed in the margins of the book (using two different decks, I wish I knew the significance of the change) in a most elegant form of storytelling. (5/99)
Cosmicomics -- This is the first book I ever read by Calvino, back in college in a fabulous Comparative Literature class -- and even at that tender, relatively oblivious age of 18 it floored me. Calvino takes concepts from science about the evolution of the universe, but then makes those concepts somehow into characters with oh-so-human relationships and troubles. Tales of love, jealousy, admiration, discrimination, and so on take place in the most fantastical circumstances of galaxies forming, dinosaurs evolving, even pre-Big Bang non-space. I love this book. (5/99)
If On a Winter's Night a Traveler --
Invisible Cities -- Calvino is the master of odd "concept" books, and this is another of those. The premise is that Marco Polo is telling Kublai Khan tales of the cities that he has seen in his travels -- the description of each is only one or two pages, and they are arranged in a complex pattern of categories: cities and memory, thin cities, trading cities, cities and eyes, cities and names, etc. Each city is beautifully drawn out, and eventually are revealed to be in truth just one city: "At times all I need is a brief glimpse, an opening in the midst of an incongruous landscape, a glint of lights in the fog, the dialog of two passersby meeting in the crowd, and I think that, setting out from there, I will put together, piece by piece, the perfect city, made of fragments mixed with the rest, of instants separated by intervals, of signals one sends out, not knowing who receives them." A truly incredible book. (5/99)
The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount (two novellas) --
The Road to San Giovanni (essays) -- sometimes a bit hard to follow, these are all more or less about memory -- and after reading "La Poubelle Agreee", you'll never look at taking out the trash the same. (7/97)
Emperor of the Air -- beautiful, lonesome, well-crafted stories - makes me think of being on a dimly-lit porch late in the evening. (7/97)
The Palace Thief -- not as fabulous as Emperor of the Air, but still very good. I particularly liked "Batorsag and Szerelem." (10/97)
How Proust Can Change Your Life -- I've never ventured to actually read Proust myself, but after reading this clever, very amusing book, I'm quite tempted to try! A strange cross between literary criticism, biography, and a self-help book, I found a lot of insightful observations on life, both by Proust and by De Botton himself, in this odd little volume. (8/98)
Kiss and Tell -- having read the Proust book, I had to try some of de Botton's fiction - and was rewarded for my efforts. This book completely delighted me, perhaps partly because the way some British writers exert a mystical charm through their words. After being castigated for lacking empathy, the narrator decides to write a biography of the next person he meets, who happens to be a girl at a party, who he also eventually starts dating. The book consists of trying to sort through the details of her life, and becomes a wry discussion of how the essence of a person emerges (or doesn't) from those details. Very fun and highly recommended. (8/98)
The Romantic Movement AND On Love -- these two novels are actually very similar, so much so that now I have trouble remembering which is which. Both follow love affairs from moment of inception to their final ends, charting the stages and moods that relationships go through. De Botton writes in a somewhat academic-sounding style, often interjecting tidbits of theories as to why people behave the way they do, etc., all while remaining incredibly witty and charming. (1/99)
Out Of Africa and Shadows On the Grass -- this book is a paradox for me: it's truly one of the most impersonal books I've read in a long time -- Dinesen doesn't reveal much about her personal history or emotional life at all. For instance, she never once mentions her (former) husband, nor could you ever guess from reading this that Denys Finch-Hatton was the love of her life, and not just a friendly neighbor. Yet her writing evokes an Africa so intimate and immediate -- I really felt as though I was standing on her porch, waiting for a bushbuck to appear from the edge of the forest at dusk -- plus there's an overwhelming mood of sadness or melancholy, and she describes the places and native people and experiences that she loved so well, and that now only exist in her memory (she lived in Kenya for nearly 20 years, but had to sell out and leave, just at the time when Finch-Hatton died unexpectedly, and she never returned) -- she sounds like a woman who's left behind part of her core being in a far-off land and time. I was utterly transfixed while reading this, inspired by how she took her loss and loneliness and turned it into a book so beautiful. (7/99)
Letters From Africa, 1914-1931 -- after so enjoying Out of Africa last year, but noticing how impersonal much of Dinesen's writing is, I delved into this collection of her letters, written mostly to her mother and brother, in hopes of discovering more of her personal side. After reading into the year 1926, I have yet to have more than an elusive grasp of who this woman was, what she was like. Her writing still has a very formal air to it. It's also odd, reading someone's letters -- I feel a bit like I'm prying. Still, at times it's been fascinating, and I've dog-eared MANY pages to remember some passage or thought. Perhaps a biography of Dinesen should be next on my list? (1/00)
1933 Was A Bad Year -- a very quick read, and another perfectly formed story. A high school baseball player with a talent for pitching (he lovingly speaks of "The Arm" as if it were a distinct entity from him) wrestles with his apparent fate to become a brick-layer like his father, in the depths of the Depression. The clarity of his teen-aged dreams, his confusions, his love and his despair cut straight through even a sleepy-headed reader like myself. I have recently received a most-welcome box of several more Fante books on loan, & I'm having to force myself to read my bookgroup books instead! (11/00)
The Brotherhood of the Grape -- a complex story of a man's relationship with his father, contradictions of love and hate and admiration and disgust all rolled into one. The narrator is a writer, brought back to his Central Valley hometown by the news of a possible impending divorce between his aging Italian parents. Instead, his father, a wine-guzzling, skirt-chasing, compulsive-gambler bricklayer, wants him to help him finish one last job, building a stone smokehouse in the Sierras. Interesting how the details of all of Fante's books parallel his own life but do not mirror it exactly, and how things (like names, hometowns) shift from story to story. His writing is clear and crass and at times incredibly beautiful. (1/01)
West of Rome -- this book is actually two novellas, published posthumously, called "My Dog Stupid" and "The Orgy." Just HAD to read this one, since Vic Chestnutt named an excellent album after it! As before, I love Fante's relaxed-yet-sharp style of writing, but didn't enjoy "My Dog Stupid" as much as I wanted to. Perhaps I just wasn't in the right mood for its pervasive sour note, despite the humor? Or maybe I've just read too many stories of mid-1970s families coming apart at the seams. Not sure. I enjoyed "The Orgy" much more, even though it's just as tense in places. Either way, a fascinating writer. (1/01)
An Alphabet for Gourmets -- Clearly, as you can see below, I have been on a bit of an M.F.K. kick of late - this book follows the alphabet in her usual discussions of food, from "A is for dining Alone," through "O is for Ostentation," to "Z is for Zakuski." Some very good recipes included. It is one of five in her "Art of Eating" series, including Consider the Oyster, Serve It Forth, How To Cook A Wolf, and The Gastronomical Me (far and away my favorite). (5/98)
Consider the Oyster -- her smallest book, I think, and entirely devoted to that odd delicacy. The best chapter is the first, "Love and Death Among the Molluscs," leading off with the enticing line: "An oyster leads a dreadful but exciting life." Most enjoyable. (5/98)
The Gastronomical Me -- but be sure you have plenty of snacks on hand when you read this one, you'll get incredibly hungry! I gave this book to several people at Christmas 1997, as it always amazes me how many people have never heard of the fabulous Mary Frances. She writes about food, but really (and particularly in this book) writes about relationships between people, with food or eating as sort of the medium of exchange. Covers her life from childhood in California to married life in France and Switzerland and back again. (5/98)
Long Ago in France -- this is a collection of various pieces Fisher wrote about her years living in Dijon, France, 1929-32. She was young and just married, and describes the city, the people, and the food with an equal amounts of fond nostalgia and candor. Lovingly evocative, as most of her writings are. (1/01)
Stay Me, O Comfort Me -- her second volume of memoirs, these following her life from the early days of her first marriage, in 1933, through the death of her second husband in 1941. These aren't exactly memoirs, but rather journal entries (and a few stories) - as I have been keeping a journal myself since the age of 13, it was wonderful to see similarities in how we puzzle over our lives, or chastise ourselves for various misgivings or faults. Her life was so rich, and her writing so evocative, this book inspired me, both to live life more richly and to try to describe it more fully in my writing. (5/98)
To Begin Again -- memoirs of her childhood in southern California. Not quite as centered on food as her other writings, but still a wonderful read by a fascinating woman. (10/97)
A Welcoming Life: The M.F.K. Fisher Scrapbook (compiled and annotated by Dominique Gioia) -- my great fascination with this writer made this an instant sell to me, a collection of photographs from her life, along with some biographical sketches, quotes, etc. I was greatly surprised (particularly as an avid journal-keeper myself) to learn that at one point in her life, Mary Frances burned many of her earlier journals and letters, in an attempt to move past painful times and start fresh -- but of course later regretted it, as we can't ever completely recreate ourselves, but can only try to bring new freshness into the existing story. She is so inspirational -- makes me want to take a cooking class and try writing more seriously myself. One of these days, perhaps! (1/01)
The Life to Come (short stories) --
A Room With A View -- The film version has long been a favorite of mine, and I was astonished by how closely the dialogue in the movie follows the book - very true to the telling! And what a wonderful love story, underlain by that elusive feeling of "rightness" in what we call True Love, yet how that feeling can so easily be subverted or ignored because it can be so frightening to face up to! or something like that. Wonderful book, everyone should read it over and over. (5/98)
Blue Highways -- the author lost his job and split from his wife, and so packed up himself into his van and set off around the country, following the smallest roads he could find (the back roads that were marked blue on old maps, to show that they were not interstates), seeking out what remained of small-town, distinctive America, and ever in search of the elusive seven-calendar cafe. A truly incredible introduction to a country I've lived in all my life. (10/97)
Riverhorse: A Voyage Across America -- not quite sailing across the ocean, instead Heat-Moon departs from New York Harbor and heads up the Hudson, seeking a route across the US in his small powerboat Nikawa ("river horse" in Osage) with as few miles of over-land portage as possible. The theme of the voyage is inscribed on a wooden plaque near the helm, a Quaker proverb: "Proceed as the way opens." As always, Heat-Moon is a clear-eyed observer of America from the view of the traveler, and this voyage leans on luck as well as a willingness to take the backwater (literally) routes -- these observations mixed with a deep reading of Americans' historical relationship with rivers make for a rich odyssey. A favorite quote (p. 460): "I've never believed speed and ease are conducive to living fully, becoming aware, or deepening memory, a tripod of urges to stabilize and lend meaning to my life." Highly recommended. (5/04)
About A Boy -- I both adored and felt a little disappointed by this book. Central character Will strikes onto a brilliant plan: to meet dates, he joins a single parents' support group, even though he has no children of his own -- but ends up unexpectedly befriending a very mixed-up twelve-year-old boy, Marcus. It's a very sweet and funny story, but many of the characters, particularly Will and Marcus' mother Fiona, are a bit too caricature-esque. Also the ending becomes a bit of a muddle, & doesn't flow well from the rest of the story -- admittedly, I doubt ANYONE could make Kurt Cobain's death the catalyst for concluding a novel and have it go off gracefully. Still, very entertaining & a fast read. (7/99)
High Fidelity -- my friend Nicole gave me this for christmas, and it's a great read -- a British guy who knows a lot about music contemplates his pretty-good-but-not-stunning relationship. At times several of the characters, but especially Rob, reminded me a bit too much of myself -- ouch! Anyone seriously into pop music should definitely read this one (if you haven't already!) (7/97)
A Little More About Me (memoir) -- these are essays from Houston's own life rather than short stories, but they read very similarly to her fiction -- and to me, that means they read WONDERFULLY. Her experiences are so adventurous and interesting, yet the human dramas and perplexities she finds herself in so often resemble my own, I inevitably read her books in one sitting, as I did again with this one. Especially interesting musings on strength -- physical and emotional, having it or not -- and its role in her life and relationships, which inspired me to do some serious scribbling in my own journal. In one essay she describes her life as perpetually "in pursuit of what I don't do well" -- sometimes I think I could use a little larger dose of that attitude, throwing oneself into riskier ventures rather than staying close to what's known. In the meantime, I can't get enough Pam. (4/00)
Cowboys Are My Weakness -- short stories all about women who are, like me, inexplicably drawn to the most determinedly independent men they can find, and then become frustrated in their often-futile attempts to have relationships with them. Houston's men are much more outdoorsy and adventurous than most of mine have been -- lots of backpacking, river-rafting, and game hunting take place in this collection -- but they still seem very familiar. (1/00)
Waltzing the Cat -- this book had the most profound effect on me of any I've read in a long time, serving as a sort of pivot point around which my own life rotated. Each story in this book can stand alone on its own merits, yet together they form a chronological sequence in the life of Lucy, in her mid-30s, uncertain where here life is taking her. While the details of her life are wildly different from mine, I devoured the book in one sitting, feeling like I was reading my own story through the twists and turns of hers. Finishing it, I felt as though some searching, unsettled part of me had started to heal, somehow. I can't wait to read this one again. (1/99)
Snow Country -- quiet, spare, and melancholy. A tale of love that makes no sense, and can't last, yet isn't questioned, but simply lived. I think I'll need to read this one again to fully grasp it. (8/98)
The Sound of the Mountain -- the Iyer book inspired me to read some more Japanese fiction, so I pulled this off my to-read shelf. This story is very quiet -- if you can imagine writing as having a monotone, this would be it. Every sentence is somehow delivered with the same mood of a basic simplicity and elegance, whether it's describing sunflowers in someone's garden or a heated argument. The result is a novel that is at once dreamy and luminous but also incredibly tense and immediate. It centers on an older man, Shingo, and his family -- the distance and murkiness between him and his son, the often-strained relations with his wife and daughter, and his gentle compassion and affection -- bordering on desire? -- for his daughter-in-law. The sound of the mountain is a faint rumble he hears coming from the hills behind his house, bringing a sense of foreboding that never quite resolves itself. This book moved slowly for me but with increasing power and draw. (7/01)
Animal Dreams -- people have been suggesting I read this book for years. My grandmother gave me my copy in 1989, my boyfriend at the time highly recommended it a few years later, but for some reason I never read it. But when my new book group voted to read Kingsolver's most recent novel (see below), for some reason I wanted to read this one first. And like everyone suggested, it's wonderful -- an engaging story, circling around the importance of family, roots, and having a sense of being in the one place in the world you truly belong. I especially liked the sections about the old Indian pueblos in Arizona, in the winter, being such an integral part of the wild landscape around them AND the human landscape through time. I hope someday to find a place in which I feel so securely at home. (4/00)
The Poisonwood Bible -- the first book of my new book group that I actually finished! And for good reason: this is a great book. With some distant (though much more extreme) parallels to my own family's dynamics, it follows an evangelical Baptist missionary, his wife and four daughters into the Congo in 1959-61. Their struggles to survive not only the African jungle but each other are in the near focus of the story, while the political upheavals of the time simmer in the background. One thing other people seem to like less about this book but that I really appreciate is the way it changes tone and pace in the second half, AFTER tragedy strikes the family, by continuing to follow the sisters up to the more or less present day. Hence the book explores not only the close-up intensity of their family's breakdown in the jungle, but how they continue to live with, and be shaped by, those experiences, each taking their lives in different directions as a result, instead of just ending with, "And they all lived happily ever after, The End." A powerful book, with a captivating story AND underlying subtlety and nuance. (4/00)
Into the Wild -- even though I initially felt contempt for the subject of this book, a young man who wandered into the Alaskan bush fairly unprepared, and died there soon after, I ended up reading this book in one sitting, I was so drawn into the tale Krakauer has meticulously researched of HOW Chris McCandless came to such a point in his life. And the portrait, as well as Krakauer's description of the strong parallels to his own life when he was younger, made me realize that at least one person I've known, and dearly loved, lived his life in a similar fashion, except not to the extreme degree that McCandless did, and so from reading the book I understood my friend, and my own frustration in caring for him, just a little bit better. (8/98)
Into Thin Air -- wow wow wow is all I can say. I'm not usually a big fan of he-man-barely-surviving-the-wilds-of-nature books, but this one is an incredibly absorbing, well-written, gripping story of the 1996 disasters on Mount Everest, and raises a lot of intriguing questions about who is "qualified" to attempt climbing into such forbidding places. And Krakauer's troubled (and often overly self-castigating) view of his role in the disaster should be an example of painfully honest reporting. I came away from the book with a strong sense of his own ambivalence about the whole thing. (7/97)
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting -- realized I hadn't re-read any of Kundera's books in a long while, and chose this one. It is an odd combination of novel, political discussion, and ruminations by the author, all with a somewhat autobiographical tinge. The theme of laughter centers particularly on Kundera's definition of two kinds of laughter: that of the devil, where everything is meaningless and absurd, and that of the angels, expressing a serious joy -- but that both are extremes, and hence "Human life is bounded by two chasms: fanaticism on one side, absolute skepticism on the other" (p. 233). His explorations of forgetting tend to involve the role of the past -- an individual's past, a country's past (in his case Czechoslovakia under Soviet occupation) -- in informing us who we are, yet how often we long to forget, to cut ourselves off from what has come before. He equates forgetting with death, the loss of the self, either at the personal or the national scale. And of course the book involves lots of sex, as all Kundera books do, as he believes this is where the deepest secrets are located and can be revealed. One of the favorite aspects is the way the author keeps breaking in to his own stories, interjecting his opinion or an observation. For example, in the middle of describing a fictional cafe discussion about literature, Kundera interrupts: "You are hearby excused from the lecture the two Socrateses gave the young woman on the art of writing. I want to talk about something else instead. Recently I took a taxi from one end of Paris to the other and got a garroulous driver..." (p. 91), and adds a real-world discussion on the cumpulsion to write. This habit makes the book feel more like a conversation than a one-sided story-telling, and hence feels more close and involving to me. Left me with lots of ideas to ponder and resounding, sometimes disturbing images swirling in my head. (7/02)
Identity -- a very enjoyable page-turning read, but I was left rather puzzled by the ending, where Kundera seems to sort of run out of steam, & resorts to a rather weak resolution to the building misunderstandings between his two characters, Chantal and Jean-Marc. It does make for a rather interesting discussion of the fine line between what we know to be true in our relationships vs. what we assume or guess -- and as always Kundera's writing is exquisite and utterly absorbing. I actually read this in a very noisy Irish bar while ostensibly watching a baseball game, but my attention was completely held by the book -- hence, perhaps, my greater disappointment with the end. (7/99)
Ignorance -- yet another musing on the central role of memory in forming sense of self from Kundera -- this one written through the stories of two emigres, who both left Prague when the Soviets invaded in 1968, then return after the country opens up again after 1989. I read this book quickly, intrigued by Kundera's ideas about nostalgia as something that overtakes actual memory and replaces it, "so fully absorbed is it by its suffering and nothing else" (p. 33), and the ways in which people struggle to reconnect with their own pasts after a long absence, standing on the uneasy platform of their memories, which never seem to match other people's percpetions or recollections of the same time. I enjoyed reading the book, just not as jaw-droppingly amazing as some of his other novels. (5/04)
Immortality --
The Joke --
Slowness -- interesting theme of the increasing pace of modern society and how that affects our perception & enjoyment of romance. (7/97)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being -- I read this and then saw the movie in college with my friend Nancy, and I immediately identified with the wife Teresa, while Nancy identified with the mistress Sabina -- I suppose that should have told us something! This book beautifully explores the differences between seeing life as something that is heavy, substantial, eternal, vs. life as light, ephemeral, a mere outline of possibilities; irreconcilable choices vs. fortuitous events; "It must be so!" vs. "It could just as well have been otherwise." I like Kundera's style of writing -- forming a conversation with his readers, jumping in and out of the narrative and his ideas about it, he is as much a character in the book as Teresa and Tomas. Ever since I read it, it's been one of my all-time favorites. (5/99)
Assembling California --
Basin and Range --
The Control of Nature -- McPhee explores three instances of humans attempting to take control of natural forces: one a failure (regulating the flow of the Mississippi River), one a success (preventing lava from filling a harbor in Iceland), and one still a toss-up (trying to prevent deadly mudflows in the mountains around Los Angeles). I'm left amazed, both by our incredible ability to engineer solutions to monumental adversities, and by our apparent arrogance often present in doing so. (5/98)
Birds of America -- Moore is a phenomenally good writer, and I love her stories, but I have not been able to get through this collection -- despite wonderful humor throughout, so many of her characters strike too close to home for me -- women in their thirties, with various romantic/family/other relationships that seem to be crumbling or are already gone, now not sure of what to do with themselves next. The sensation of not being seen, understood or appreciated by those you love is so strong at times it feels like it'll jump out of the pages and grab me -- so I've set it aside after reading about half the stories. It says a lot about just how talented Moore is. (5/99)
Like Life --
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? -- I really liked the first half of this story, reminiscing about a best friend from high school in a small town, but the second half, with the narrator now an adult, didn't have the same energy. (10/97)
Love in the Ruins -- I SO loved The Moviegoer that I quickly scooped up this volume as well. Very different, & not as awe-inducingly incredible, but still a great book. It covers four days in the life of Dr. Thomas More, an alcoholic psychiatrist who has invented a device that measures the emotional troubles boiling away in people's souls (the wonderfully named lapsometer, gauging the degree of fall, or lapse, away from the sense of self), and even can treat them. In the meantime, the insanely polarized Southern society he lives in is falling apart -- but perhaps the lapsometer can help? Especially when fueled by plentiful toddies and gin fizzes! Highly entertaining, although not as stunning as his debut, Percy's writing style remains completely unique, very languid and rambly yet sharp and funny and insightful (all characteristics I'm rather fond of). I think I'll have to pick up the rest of Percy's work, and soon! (8/00)
The Moviegoer -- This book had been on my "buy soon!" list for ages when I finally picked up a copy in late May -- and a few weeks later my friend Paul Austin visited & INSISTED that I read this right away, as it's his favorite book. So I did, and he's right, it's a brilliant read. Jack "Binx" Bolling appears to be a perfectly ordinary, successful young businessman, but his internal thoughts and perceptions are anything but -- I especially like his desperate need to know something of the history of a place (such as a movie theater) before he can feel comfortable there, and the way he looks at people chatting in social niceties & realizes that they're dead inside. The languid pace of the book drew me in, as Jack wafts between his protected, insular life in a New Orleans suburb that he's crafted for himself -- going to movies and seducing his secretaries -- and the pricklings on the back of his neck urging him to go on a search, to follow his curiosity and clues the universe seems to be leaving him toward some kind of new understanding. I absolutely loved this book -- there's a quiet magic to it. An instant favorite-of-all-time. (6/00)
Me Talk Pretty One Day -- wry and entertaining as always, but this collection didn't grab me the same way Naked did -- the stories seem to echo each other too much, particularly the second set of stories about living in France and not speaking French. As my friend Carl pointed out, though, it did make me want to meet Sedaris' boyfriend Hugh, the stories of his childhood sounded incredible, not to mention that I can't imagine what it's like living with Sedaris! (4/02)
Naked -- this took a little while to get going for me, but then I loved it -- these are a cross between memoirs and short stories, and are both hilarious and poignant at the same time. (10/97)
Amrita -- book group selection for August 2000. This is Yoshimoto's only novel (so far?), & she might want to stick to shorter formats -- this gets pretty rambly. Still, it's full of interesting ideas and images, just many of them never feel fully formed or realized. Sakumi Wakabayashi (interestingly the same last name as my former roommate!) is a young woman in Tokyo who falls down a flight of stairs and loses her memory -- the story follows her as she gradually pieces her life back together. A number of clairvoyants, including her younger half-brother, figure into the story, as well as many ghosts (including her sister who committed suicide) & it gets confusing at times -- yet it always returns to the often-overlooked beauty of everyday life, that we manage to keep going through each day even in the face of great tragedy or confusion. That celebration of the strength found in daily life kept me reading. (8/00)
Kitchen -- this is actually a re-read for me, and the first time I read it I knew it would be one of my favorites for a long time. The two stories here are both full of the icy emptiness of loss (in her case from people dying), yet also a tiny core of warmth that grows and gradually fills the coldness with recovery and light. One of my favorite images is of her character Mikage, consumed with sadness and loneliness after her grandmother (and only family member) dies, is finally able to sleep peacefully by curling next to the refrigerator in the kitchen, drawn to its faint humming and warmth. Yoshimoto writes with a clarity and compassion that goes straight to my heart. (5/99)
Lizard -- this one left me with a feeling all day that I'd received some sort of profound message, but couldn't quite tell what it was. The stories are all based around time, healing, and fate - and Yoshimoto writes "these people are encountering hope for the first time." (7/97)
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